Thursday, October 23, 2008

I couldn’t BEGIN to tell you how many textures and photos are out of my inventory and in my K.R. Engineering organizers. Let me just say I recently bought a box of 10,000 textures from SLExchange and there were really 10,000 textures in the box. I spent a good week sorting them into organizers.

Many people sell organizers, and most are copyable so you can have organizers for any number of categories. Some organizers are rezzed on the ground, and some work as HUDS—but all get those pesky textures out of your inventory. And your photos too.

I have a free sculpty rezzer I picked up from somewhere. It’s handy, looking at a sculpty texture map will tell you little. How nice to scroll through the flexies, seeing them rez before your eyes. And bye bye, sculpties, from my inventory.

You’ll be amazed how much more svelte your inventory will be when the textures and photos are gone!

Box Rarely Used Items

I once packed items in boxes. I packed those boxes in boxes, and THOSE boxes inside boxes, eventually winding up with several thousand free items in a one-prim box, woo hoo!. I put it in inventory, and it promptly disappeared.

I chalked it up to carelessness on my part, but when I did it again and the box disappeared, this time with objects I had actually paid for, I decided it might not be such a great idea to pack thousands of items in a single box and put it in inventory.

But you can easily pack a hundred or more items into a box, and it’s unlikely to disappear from your inventory.

If you have land, you can leave heavily loaded boxes on your land. I have a prim storage platform high above Whimsy, where boxes within boxes within boxes have rested safely for months. So long as tier is paid, they are safe.

Eliminate Duplicates

Sweetie, bright star that she is, told me she looks for duplicate landmarks in the Landmarks tab in the Map. She sets the filters in Inventory (more on filters, below) so they show only landmarks and, when she identifies duplicates in the list on the map, searches by name in inventory. Then she kills the duplicates.

If something is copyable, you need not keep more than one copy. You can safely eliminate duplicates.

This isn’t the case with no copy items, however! If you have four non-copyable chairs, keep them all!
Use the Filters

You can set the filters in your Inventory to show only certain classes of things—landmarks, calling cards, objects, notecards, scripts… You can also set filters to show things acquired after a certain day. That makes it easier to find that outfit you bought day-before-yesterday. When you finish, be sure to reset the filters.

Nest Your Folders

Scrolling around in your inventory can be clumsy. I try to keep mine less than one page in length by nesting items. Sweetie makes fun of me for this. I have a folder, for instance, called Chey’s Things. Inside Chey’s Things is a folder called Vehicles. Inside the Vehicles folder is a folder called Aircraft. Inside Aircraft are folders for airplanes, helicopters, lighter-than-air craft, spaceships and rockets, and novel aircraft (in which one finds the bumblebee plane and the mustard and ketchup dispenser planes).
Open a Second Inventory Window

When sorting objects in inventory, you can open a second window and drag stuff from one window to the other. It exempts you from clumsy scrolling.

Back Up Your Important Items

It’s not a bad idea to make backups of copyable items you use frequently: gadgets like the Mystitool or Conover’s sim scanner, your hair, your vehicles, your houses, your furniture. You can keep them in a special folder or put them in a box, it doesn’t matter—you’ll have it when you need it.

Have a Yard Sale

If you have objects you don’t need but can’t bear to delete, why not have a yard sale—or go to one of the welcome areas and gift a new citizen with an outfit or a free house. It’ll make their day, and it will make you feel good besides.